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Taler supports full tracking of who received how much. That is sufficient for the government's job of taxing income. If - on the other hand - the government wo

by dbrgn 6y ago

Taler supports full tracking of who received how much. That is sufficient for the government's job of taxing income. If - on the other hand - the government would also like to mass surveil all its citizens, then that is a use case that Taler explicitly and intentionally does not support.

rowland66 6y ago
So it looks like Taler is designed as a consumer to merchant payment system, and not person to person. I suppose that person to person could work with banks serving as intermediaries. With anonymity for consumer how would transactions like exchanges and returns work?
- captn3m0 6y ago
  There’s the possibility of creating a new wallet with your money and handing over the keys.
sofixa 6y ago
> That is sufficient for the government's job of taxing income. But not of fighting money laundering. If all income is anonymous, it'd be relatively easy to set up a fake digital-only product and buy yourself lots of it.
- bdauvergne 6y ago
  To spend coins on yourself you must have received them first under some identity, so it does not ease money laundering. It could eventually ease money laundering between countries where laws are different. For example, sell drugs from Netherland, receive Taller coins, buy virtual things from your company in France to move it there. But in fact you can already do that, buy a coffee shop in Amsterdam, and transfer your income after taxes to your bank account in France. Great your are a drug baron living from France now. What it will prevent is for a country to block their citizen from buying something illegal from another where it is legal, as it is done with card payment and drugs bought online.
  - rebuilder 6y ago
    Isn't the point of money laundering to obfuscate the identity of the original recipient of funds? Don't get me wrong, I'm not sure Taler would make things harder for regulators and law enforcement. KYC requirements apply even if the payment method itself is anonymous. But I'd think that given the opportunity, governments would like to have better oversight of financial transactions.
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      The point of money laundering is to conceal the source of funds. The way you conceal the source of funds is by creating fake receipts. Without receipts, a bunch of Thaler showing up for no reason is no different than a bunch of dollars showing up for no reason. You may be suspected of being a criminal.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Depositing money in the system is not anonymous - it can't track whether you bought your own fake product or something else, but you would already have to have "clean" money to convert it to Taler at an exchange.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nullc 6y ago
This is so deceptive and dishonest. Realtime mass surveillance of every party who receives money is isomorphic to realtime mass surveillance of everyone. Every person who sends funds received them previously and is sending them to someone who is receiving them. Taler's surveilling is continuous, unaccountable, and operates without any due process what so ever: No court is required to authorize surveilling your records, nor can you even detect it to fight the intrusion. The claim that the mass surveillance is required to enable taxation is outright untrue and inconsistent with longstanding practice. Taxation, including sales taxes, existed for a long time before low privacy electronic payment networks existed.
- igorkraw 6y ago
  That's just wrong. If me and 10 other people buy things for 5 bucks from a vendor with taler, there is no way to trace it to us as I understand, and no way to distinguish which of us paid which 5 bucks. How is that isomorphic to full surveillance? It's more privacy than both traditional payment Systems and most cryptocurrencies
- 9000 6y ago
  > Realtime mass surveillance of every party who receives money is isomorphic to realtime mass surveillance of everyone. I don't believe it is. For instance, imagine a closed system of three people: Alice, Bob, and Carol. Initially we start off with seeding both Alice and Bob $100 via Taler. We can see that because it is public. Then, we see that Carol receives $5. That is also public. Who gave Carol the $5? If surveillance of money received is isometric to full surveillance, you should be able to answer this question, but clearly there is insufficient information, so clearly they are not isometric. There may be special cases where sufficiently large transactions can only have come from a small pool of wealthy transactors, but I bet this would be essentially meaningless in practice, and is absolutely not the same as equating the system to full surveillance of every participant.

by dbrgn 6y ago

rowland66 6y ago

So it looks like Taler is designed as a consumer to merchant payment system, and not person to person. I suppose that person to person could work with banks serving as intermediaries. With anonymity for consumer how would transactions like exchanges and returns work?

captn3m0 6y ago
There’s the possibility of creating a new wallet with your money and handing over the keys.

sofixa 6y ago

> That is sufficient for the government's job of taxing income. But not of fighting money laundering. If all income is anonymous, it'd be relatively easy to set up a fake digital-only product and buy yourself lots of it.

bdauvergne 6y ago
To spend coins on yourself you must have received them first under some identity, so it does not ease money laundering. It could eventually ease money laundering between countries where laws are different. For example, sell drugs from Netherland, receive Taller coins, buy virtual things from your company in France to move it there. But in fact you can already do that, buy a coffee shop in Amsterdam, and transfer your income after taxes to your bank account in France. Great your are a drug baron living from France now. What it will prevent is for a country to block their citizen from buying something illegal from another where it is legal, as it is done with card payment and drugs bought online.
- rebuilder 6y ago
  Isn't the point of money laundering to obfuscate the identity of the original recipient of funds? Don't get me wrong, I'm not sure Taler would make things harder for regulators and law enforcement. KYC requirements apply even if the payment method itself is anonymous. But I'd think that given the opportunity, governments would like to have better oversight of financial transactions.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    The point of money laundering is to conceal the source of funds. The way you conceal the source of funds is by creating fake receipts. Without receipts, a bunch of Thaler showing up for no reason is no different than a bunch of dollars showing up for no reason. You may be suspected of being a criminal.
PeterisP 6y ago
Depositing money in the system is not anonymous - it can't track whether you bought your own fake product or something else, but you would already have to have "clean" money to convert it to Taler at an exchange.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nullc 6y ago

This is so deceptive and dishonest. Realtime mass surveillance of every party who receives money is isomorphic to realtime mass surveillance of everyone. Every person who sends funds received them previously and is sending them to someone who is receiving them. Taler's surveilling is continuous, unaccountable, and operates without any due process what so ever: No court is required to authorize surveilling your records, nor can you even detect it to fight the intrusion. The claim that the mass surveillance is required to enable taxation is outright untrue and inconsistent with longstanding practice. Taxation, including sales taxes, existed for a long time before low privacy electronic payment networks existed.

igorkraw 6y ago
That's just wrong. If me and 10 other people buy things for 5 bucks from a vendor with taler, there is no way to trace it to us as I understand, and no way to distinguish which of us paid which 5 bucks. How is that isomorphic to full surveillance? It's more privacy than both traditional payment Systems and most cryptocurrencies
9000 6y ago
> Realtime mass surveillance of every party who receives money is isomorphic to realtime mass surveillance of everyone. I don't believe it is. For instance, imagine a closed system of three people: Alice, Bob, and Carol. Initially we start off with seeding both Alice and Bob $100 via Taler. We can see that because it is public. Then, we see that Carol receives $5. That is also public. Who gave Carol the $5? If surveillance of money received is isometric to full surveillance, you should be able to answer this question, but clearly there is insufficient information, so clearly they are not isometric. There may be special cases where sufficiently large transactions can only have come from a small pool of wealthy transactors, but I bet this would be essentially meaningless in practice, and is absolutely not the same as equating the system to full surveillance of every participant.